2016 In Context: Why Not Judge Israel the Way We Judge the United States?

Gil
Troy is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, just published by Thomas Dunne Books of St.
Martin's Press. His next book will update Arthur Hertzberg's The Zionist
Idea. He is Professor of History at McGill University. Follow on
Twitter @GilTroy

Click HERE for more installments of 2016 In Context: Gil Troy's commentary on the closing days of the election.

Three
weeks from today, Americans finally will have a chance to vote for president of
the United States -- hundreds of other offices on ballots across the country.
As a presidential historian who has written histories of presidential
campaigning, of various presidents, of First Ladies, including Hillary Clinton
when she was in that symbolic role, and, most recently, of the Clintons and the
1990s in The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, every day until Election Day I will post
an article putting this election in historical context, trying to explain this
wild and wacky race using history as our guide. So here it goes, with
hashtag #2016incontext

Dear Canadians,

Clearly, the
U.S. presidential campaign has revealed every American’s truly ugly face.

• America is racist: look
at those cop killings, listen to Black Lives Matter, and see the statistics
showing how disproportionately African-Americans end up imprisoned, on welfare
and failing school.

• America is sexist: it
has a major party nominee who boasts about pawing women, who speaks about women
as if they are mere sex objects.

• America is
anti-immigrant: consider those yahoos shouting down Muslims and Mexicans,
blaming outsiders because they can’t find jobs, talking about building a big
wall in the South, and billing Mexico for it.

• America is hostile to
people with special needs: have you seen that leading politician mocking a
reporter’s palsy?

• America is corrupt: of
its two major nominees, one dodged taxes for years and one broke the law about
handling government secrets via email, but the FBI director found her crimes
not-prosecutable – not the standards of behaviour you want in a leader.

• America is
undemocratic: try explaining the electoral college to a fellow Canadian, or
having it explained to you if you don’t understand it. How many Americans even
realize that every four years, they don’t cast ballots for one of the nominees
for president, but for electors pledged to support that nominee?

• America is falling
apart: look at that years-long electoral circus, the endless campaigning, the
billions in campaign contributions, the fury between competing groups, the
vicious partisan competition, and the many problems highlighted economically,
politically, culturally and diplomatically – with few realistic solutions in
sight.

Given what a disaster and disappointment it has become,
shouldn’t we all agree:

• To boycott all American
goods, all American academics, anything to do with America, immediately – and
to agitate on every Canadian university to boycott America, making sure that
all Americans on our campuses feel uncomfortable and rejected because of their
evil country;

• To endorse as many UN
resolutions as possible criticizing America, punishing Americans and isolating
America. Let’s have a General Assembly resolution declaring “Americanism is
Racism!” Let’s have a UNESCO resolution declaring the American Revolution never
happened. Let’s have one Security Council resolution demanding Manhattan’s
return to the natives, who clearly didn’t intend to sell it for $24 to settlers
centuries ago, and piles of resolutions demanding that America stop building in
its settlements, places named after natives – Detroit, Chicago, Massachusetts,
Alabama – proving the indigenous suffering imposed by this racist, colonialist
entity whose name we shouldn’t even mention;

• That America shouldn’t
exist and should never have been established, given that it was built on land
stolen from the natives (who were even mocked in the World Series by that
Cleveland Indians team)?

Hmmm. Of course, the
United States has its problems and its flaws. But every intelligent person
reading these words also realizes that the “racist” country elected a black
president, that “sexist” America is also Hillary Clinton’s America, that
immigrants built this “anti-immigrant” country, that the Americans with
Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, that America is far less corrupt than most
countries, that no large democracy is as pure as a town meeting with its
straight-up votes, and that America the dysfunctional may have been making
headlines recently, but America the functional remains an extraordinarily safe,
happy and productive place.

Moreover, boycotting
America would hurt Canada, such anti-American resolutions wouldn’t pass in the
UN, and Canada might be next on the docket if we start opening up the question
of natives.

In short, we judge
America wisely, maturely, in proportion and in context, understanding that
countries are complex, that not everything is so black and white, that we
shouldn’t be so harsh and judgmental, and that, we, too, have our flaws.

So I’m confused. If we
can judge America and ourselves so fairly, why not Israel?